Fiction
December Contributors
Richard Alured, Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi, Arthur Aronstein, Jennifer Benningfield, Andrew Rai Berzins, Ace Boggess, Courtney Burten, Kayla Cain, Luanne Castle, Ronita Chattopadhyay, Tulip Chowdhury, Megan Chunn, Ben Connell, Kyle Cox, Jake Creps, Roger D’Agostin, Harry Del Monaco, K. Uwe Dunn, Zary Fekete, Ryan Frye, Steve Gerson, Benjamin Goluboff, Katie Goto-Švić, Richard Grayson, Dee P. R. Kay, Joe Kilgore, Hank Kirton, James A. Knight, Nolan Knight, Alejandro Gabriel Leopardi, Lior Locher, River Lucero, Mark Luebbers, Lindsey Maple, Shrutidhora P Mohor, Guinevere Ngozi Morgen, Faith Murri, Joseph Quilindrino Niduazu, Mika Nadolsky, Susan Brink O’Flaherty, Steve Oehmen, Seth Parker, Randall Perry, Timothy Petkovic, Rachel Racette, Arjun Razdan, L.G. Reed, Nicolas Rivera, Hil Schmidt, Gahl Shattan, Sumitra Singam, Melvin Sterne, Elizabeth Sundstrom, Amir Szuster, Jack Uppling, Derek Waulet, Walter Weinschenk, CR Widen, Jacob Wrich, Brandon Yu, Dodge Zelko, Kit Zimmerman
December Highlights
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erotomania
Flash Fiction by Nicolas Rivera
“The trick is to do the opposite of convention. Lighting, video quality, the flattery of a flirtatious angle are important details, but the key to social media is delivery.”
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all the kooks
Fiction by Ace Boggess
“The fight started right in front of her in the pasta aisle. Mary Ellen wasn’t close enough to hear if words had been exchanged…Everything was political, even the act of picking out linguini.”
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the pain master
Fiction by Lior Locher
“Neutral face, clean-shaven. Eyebrows neat, hair lined up like a platoon. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. You both know the deal.”
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the day she swalloed glass
Fiction by Ronita Chattopadhyay
“She was done with being quiet and submissive. “I will become tough,” she said out loud. She gulped down the remaining water. And then she noticed it – a crack at the bottom of the glass.”
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dispatch
Micro-fiction by Nolan Knight
“The detective flashes his penlight over a slick of blood. Eyes the busted back door, scans the yard. Body was moved. That’s three this week. Or was it last week?”
lycanthropy
by Maria Pianelli Blair
“I think it’s modern Darwinism — how would we expect our girls to survive, otherwise? A girl needs a little firepower every now and again.”
comorbid
by Ika Bittern
“The body in the open casket is smoothed over, waxy – as if, if you cut it, it would be the same all the way through. As if it never had any secrets.”
that sort of thing
by Daniel Deisinger
“In July, her parents found her drowned in the creek. Her body floated in the weeping willow's shade.”
good soup
by Clare Martin
“I serve the soup and together we eat the pain, the wasted years, the anger, and the loss.”
I promise it gets better than this.
by Alexander Holcomb
“I crouched under the window, ready to reveal myself to the police. My brother sat beside me. Would they use handcuffs? I hoped not.”
belmont
by Kyle Cox
“He grips my chin and I open my mouth, slow to stop myself, but stop myself I do, just before a word slobbers out. Maybe my last one. This drug, whatever it’s called, makes my mind wander and it makes me slow.”
hello
by Michael Czyzniejewski
“Whisenhunt explained he’d just learned the word Hello hadn’t been invented until the early 1800s, and for decades, was considered vulgar slang, big-time commoner talk.”
do you ever stare at people’s arms while you ride the subway?
by Vivian Littlefield
“Can you separate her from herself and does it part for you like the sea for Moses? Is it exciting?”
two bikes
by Elijah Cansler
“The noon sun beats down mean on the school bus Two Bikes calls home. He lies sleeping in it, red and peeling all over except for where his skin is covered by the cargo shorts that he hasn’t taken off for some weeks now.”
pig
by Davor Mondom
“a Vessel’s tenure varied. Great effort was made in the selection of the pool of potential Vessels to ensure that a Vessel could serve as long as possible…Of course, you could plan only so well against the Illness.”
elaine keeps driving
by Maisy Phelps
“At 4am I keep on driving and the radio speaks to me. To me? I meant to hit my motel around 4 hours ago but I got that lonesome sunk-cost kind of lost that no map can rectify. Unless a body might be willing to break a law or two.”
sorcière
by Megan Chunn
“…the plump, fig-like lower lip, partially bitten by her incisors, then parts. Ready to be plucked and consumed.”
stickler
by Eric Angal
“The kid stands there, shadowboxing in the felt earth. He can hear the creek chuckling to his right. The sky is the color of a ripe persimmon.”
disturbance of dirt
by Brooks Egerton
“Once the interment is complete, she presses her forehead to the wet ground, inhales the sweet dark churning work of earthworms, squeezes her eyes shut, pictures her mother’s gap-toothed boyfriend and the drawer where the spoon belongs and the butcher knife that also lives there.”
mom’s special
by Erin Dawkins
“I looked down at the newly bloomed flowers that grew fully without attention or care. Without water or seed. Plucked before they’re primed, soon to brown at the edges and wilt.“
a blue baby in a red house
by Shrutidhora P Mohor
“…inside that demolished heap, is a pair of tiny, helpless hands, fingers curled up, nails light blue, the skin as thin as muslin, a premature blue baby whose survival was questionable right from the moment of its coming.”
a shadow in the dark
by P.X. Vayalumkal
“That day, Molly and I entered a long, almost never-ending darkness. It felt like searching for a light switch in a room where none exists, then realizing there’s a string hanging from a light bulb that you have to pull and when you finally pull it and hear a click, nothing happens.”
oracle
by Nolan Knight
“And you emerged? Someplace else. Not L.A.? No. Where? Dunno—magnolias sprouting gumdrops, a sherbet sky—pterodactyls overhead.”
the fable of the storyteller and his witch
by Sumitra Singam
“It was never clear who hurled the first stone. The flinty piece of rock hit her on the head, leaving a dark bloom of blood.”
the ventriloquist
by Seth David Parker
“it’s the most potent form of psychology. I pull levers. Put ideas in people’s minds. Put words in their mouths.”